The 120 Days of Sodom Quotes

“If it is the dirty element that gives pleasure to the act of lust, then the dirtier it is, the more pleasurable it is bound to be.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Nothing quite encourages as does one's first unpunished crime.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Oh, there are plenty of people," the Duc used to observe, "who never misbehave save when passion spurs them to ill; later, the fire gone out of them, their now calm spirit peacefully returns to the path of virtue and, thus passing their life going from strife to error and from error to remorse, they end their days in such a way there is no telling just what roles they have enacted on earth. Such persons," he would continue, "must surely be miserable: forever drifting, continually undecided, their entire life is spent detesting in the morning what they did the evening before. Certain to repent of the pleasures they taste, they take their delight in quaking, in such sort they become at once virtuous in crime and criminal in virtue.”
― Donatien Alphonse François de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“There are no more than two or three crimes to commit in the world,’ said Curval. ‘Once those are done there is no more to be said – what remains is inferior and one no longer feels a thing. How many times, good God, have I not wished it were possible to attack the sun, to deprive the universe of it, or to use it to set the world ablaze – those would be crimes indeed, and not the little excesses in which we indulge, which do no more than metamorphose, in the course of a year, a dozen creatures into clods of earth.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“I would, thank God, watch the universe perish without shedding a tear.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“One would have to lose one's wits to believe in a God, and to become a complete imbecile to adore Him.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“From an early age I set myself above the monstrous fantasies of religion, being perfectly convinced that the existence of the creator is a revolting absurdity in which not even children believe any more; there is no need for me to restrain my tastes in order to please Him, it is from Nature that I received these tastes, and I should offend her by resisting them – if they are wicked, it is because they serve her purposes. In her hands I am nothing but a machine for her to operate as she wishes, and there is not a single one of my crimes that fails to serve her; the greater her need, the more she spurs me on – I should be a fool to resist her. Only the law stands in my way, but I defy it – my gold and my influence place me beyond the reach of those crude scales meant only for the common people.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Nothing that makes one hard is wicked and the only crime in the world is to refuse oneself that pleasure.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“How many times, by God’s bloody prick, have I longed to be able to detonate planets, to destroy the sun itself, to pluck it from the universe and crash it into the earth, annihilating all Creation and replacing it with a lightless void of violence. Ah, that would be a crime! A cosmic crime, dwarfing the petty misdemeanours we are committing here, limited as we are to snuffing out a few meaningless souls”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“All I can tell you for certain is that at this very moment I'm speaking to you I could do with a really foul whore – I'd like her fresh from the seat of a close stool, her arse reeking of shit, and her cunt smelling of fish. Ho there, Thérèse! You whose filthiness dates back to the Flood, you who haven't wiped your arse since you were baptized and you whose vile cunt stinks for ten miles around, bring all that over here, I beg you, and add a turd, too, if you like.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“and how can you be happy when you can find satisfaction at any moment? It is not in pleasure that happiness consists, it is in desire – it is in breaking the chains that hold back this desire;”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Minä en epäröi koskaan valinnoissani ja koska olen aina varma, että löydän nautinnon siitä mitä teen, en koskaan katumalla turmele sen viehätystä.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom: An Introduction

“Few men had been as cavalier and as debauched as the Président, but completely jaded, utterly torpid, all he was left with now was the depravity and turpitude of libertinage.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Nothing is as encouraging as a first crime that goes unpunished.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Ce n’est pas dans la jouissance que consiste le bonheur, c’est dans le désir, c’est à briser les freins qu’oppose à ce désir.”
― Marquis de Sade, Les 120 Journées de Sodome, ou l'école du libertinage

“es preciso ser puta, niña mía, puta en el alma y en el corazón.”
― Marquis de Sade, LAS 120 JORNADAS DE SODOMA

“Y ahora mi estimado lector, prepárate a leer la narración más impura que se haya narrado jamás...”
― Marqués de Sade, Los 120 Días De Sodoma

“How many times, by God’s bloody prick, have I longed to be able to detonate planets, to destroy the sun itself, to puck it from the universe and crash it into the earth, annihilating all Creation and replacing it with a lightless void of violence. Ah, that would be a crime! A cosmic crime, dwarfing the petty misdemeanours we are committing here, limited as we are to snuffing out a few meaningless souls.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Please be forewarned that much of the content of this novella is extremely sexually graphic and at times violent. Read at your own volition and emotional risk.”
― Marquis de Sade, 120 Days Of Sodom

“Simone de Beauvoir has argued, perhaps counter-intuitively, that Sade deserves to be regarded as a moraliste for the ethical reflection he inspires in his readers: Sade drained to the dregs the moment of selfishness, injustice, misery, and he insisted upon its truth. The supreme value of his testimony lies in its ability to disturb us. It forces us to re-examine thoroughly the basic problem which haunts our age in different forms: the true relation between man and man.37”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“He buggers him, and during this act of sodomy he opens the skull, removes the brain and replaces it with molten lead.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“To combine incest, adultery, sodomy and sacrilege, he buggers his married daughter with a host.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“It is utterly misguided to say that the mouth of a woman or young boy must be absolutely clean in order to give pleasure; putting all manias to one side, I shall grant you if you wish that a man who craves a stinking mouth does so only out of depravity, but you must in return grant me that a mouth without the slightest fragrance gives no pleasure at all when kissed – there must always be a certain spice, a certain piquancy to all such pleasures and this picquancy is found only in a little filth.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“...it is in the midst of sensual pleasures that one takes delight in torments.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“But must we always relate everything to the senses?' asked the Bishop. 'Everything, my friend,' said Durcet. 'They alone must guide us in all our actions in life, because their voice alone is truly imperious.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“How many times, good God, have I not wished it were possible to attack the sun, to deprive the universe of it, or to use it to set the world ablaze – those would be crimes indeed, and not the little excesses in which we indulge, which do no more than metamorphose, in the course of a year, a dozen creatures into clods of earth.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Evil acts make me hard – I find in evil a charm piquant enough to awaken every sensation of pleasure in me, and I give myself to evil for evil alone, and without any other interest than evil alone.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“That evening the sexes of the quadrilles were reversed, with all the little girls as sailors, and all the little boys as grisettes – it was a ravishing sight. Nothing inflames lust like this sensual little switch: one is pleased to find in a little boy that which makes him resemble a little girl, and a girl is much more alluring when, in order to please, she borrows from the sex one would prefer her to have.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“Fanchon, 69 years of age, has been hanged 6 times in effigy, and has committed all imaginable crimes; she has a squint, and is pug-nosed, short, fat, with no forehead and only 2 teeth; an erysipelas covers her arse, a bunch of haemorrhoids hangs from her arsehole, a canker devours her vagina, she has a burnt thigh and a cancer eating away at her breast; she is always drunk, vomits, farts and shits all over the place and at any time without even noticing.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom

“The time has come, friendly reader, for you to prepare your heart and mind for the most impure tale ever written since the world began, for no such book may be found among either the ancients or the moderns.”
― Marquis de Sade, The 120 Days of Sodom